“What joins the Americans one to another is not a common ancestry, language or race, but a shared work of the imagination that looks forward to the making of a future, not backward to the insignia of the past. Their enterprise is underwritten by a Constitution that allows for the widest horizons of sight and the broadest range of expression, supports the liberties of the people as opposed to the ambitions of the state, and stands as premise for a narrative rather than plan for an invasion or a monument. The narrative was always plural; not one story, many stories.” PeopleLooksStatesStoriesAmericaPastLanguageImaginationCommonRaceLibertySupportPlansExpressionAmbitionSightConstitutionNarrativeRangeEnterpriseHorizonMonumentInvasionPremisesAncestry Author:Lewis H. Lapham
“There is no hate without fear. Hate is crystallized fear, fear's dividend, fear objectivized. We hate what we fear and so where hate is, fear is lurking. Thus we hate what threatens our person, our liberty, our privacy, our income, our popularity, our vanity and our dreams and plans for ourselves. If we can isolate this element in what we hate we may be able to cease from hating... Hate is the consequence of fear; we fear something before we hate; a child who fears noises becomes the man who hates them.” IfsMenMayChildrenPersonsDreamHateLibertyPlansElementsConsequenceCeaseIncomeNoiseVanityPrivacyPopularityOur DreamsDividendsLurkingNo Hate Author:Cyril Connolly
“The most sensible and jealous people are so little attentive to government that there are no instances of resistance until repeated, multiplied oppressions have placed it beyond a doubt that their rulers had formed settled plans to deprive them of their liberties; not to oppress an individual or a few, but to break down the fences of a free constitution, and deprive the people at large of all share in the government, and all the checks by which it is limited.” PeopleLittlesGovernmentIndividualLibertyBreakDoubtPlansShareRevolutionConstitutionChecksResistanceOppressionInstanceJealousSensibleRulersFenceBreaking DownJealous People Author:John Adams
“The good of the governed is the end, and rewards and punishments are the means, of all government. The government of the supreme and all-perfect Mind, over all his intellectual creation, is by proportioning rewards to piety and virtue, and punishments to disobedience and vice. ... The joys of heaven are prepared, and the horrors of hell in a future state, to render the moral government of the universe perfect and complete. Human government is more or less perfect, as it approaches nearer or diverges further from an imitation of this perfect plan of divine and moral government.” MindHumansMeanEndsStatesGovernmentJoyUniverseHeavenPerfectLibertyMoralHellVirtuePlansCreationDivineHorrorApproachIntellectualPreparedRewardsVicesSupremePunishmentImitationDisobediencePietyReward And Punishment Author:John Adams
“The legislatures will have better means of information. They can discover the danger at a distance; and possessing all the organs of civil power, and the confidence of the people, they can at once adopt a regular plan of opposition, in which they can combine all the resources of the community. They can readily communicate with each other in the different States, and unite their common forces for the protection of their common liberty.” PeopleMeanDifferentStatesForceCommunityCommonLibertyPlansInformationDangerResourcesDistanceCommunicateProtectionOppositionOrgansLegislaturePossessing Book:The Federalist Papers: A Collection of Essays Written in Favour of the New Constitution Source: The Federalist Papers: A Collection of Essays Written in Favour of the New Constitution